Australia (2005)

A board game for 2-5 players. Each player controls a group of Rangers, who are working on nature and industry projects in Australia during the 1920s. The game board shows 6 states, which are divided into 24 land or water regions. Every region contains a face down industrial counter and a face up nature counter. On the borders, you find bases (camps or ships), where the players place their Ranger pieces to score points. At the beginning, every player receives a number of Rangers, which he keeps on his own player board, a plane, and two cards. The back of a card shows how many Rangers you can place in a base and how many dollars you receive. The front of a card shows the region where this base should border on.

The active player must perform two actions from the following three possibilities:
1) A player may fly his plane to a region and turn up an industry counter (if available).
2) A player may play a card to collect money and/or place Rangers in one base. Should this card have the same color as the region where his plane is, placement is free. Otherwise, a fee of $3 is collected from the player.
3) A player may remove up to four Rangers from the game board back to his or her supply.
Note: A special move is allowed to move any Ranger on the board for a cost of $4.

You score points by completing nature or industrial projects. Nature projects are completed as soon as the last free base in this region contains at least 1 Ranger. The player who completes the project receives 3 bonus points. Every player with Rangers in a base in this region receives 1 point for every Ranger (2 points for Rangers on a ship base). Industrial projects are completed as soon as the industry counter is turned over and the surrounding bases contain the required number of Rangers. These projects also provide 3 bonus points and 1 point per Ranger (2 points for Rangers on a ship base). Points are registered on a scoring track. At the end of the game, each dollar is an extra victory point.

The game ends when all card piles are exhausted and at least one player has played his last card. The players add their remaining dollars to their scores. The player with the most pints wins the game.

Note: the English rules for the basic game may have an errata. It says draw 9 cards to make stacks, when the non-English rules say draw 8 cards, and the Advanced English rules say draw 9 instead of 8 cards.

Advanced rules

A windmill is introduced. When an industry counter with a windmill symbol is turned over, the windmill moves to another region and will add 1 point to its value. Whenever a region is scored, the nature or industry counter is placed on a windmill track. When the windmill track is filled, a windmill scoring round takes place. To score at the windmill, players need to place Rangers on a special Ranger track (instead of placing them in a base, as they normally would do). The player with the most Rangers on the Ranger track receives the value of the windmill in victory points. The second place receives half, the third place receives half of the second place. After the windmill scoring round, the counters on the windmill are removed and the players have to take half of their Rangers on the Ranger track back. Several windmill scoring rounds are possible. At the end of the game, an extra windmill scoring round takes place.

Awards

• 2006 Games Magazine Game of the Year
• 2005 Nederlandse Spellenprijs Nominee.

Microbadge:

Components:

• 1 gameboard
• 75 rangers
• 5 aeroplanes
• 5 scoring markers
• 5 individual player boards
• 42 cards
• 24 industrialization tiles
• 24 conservation tiles
• 44 australian dollars
• 1 windmill
• 1 arrow, 1 ring and 1 base for the windmill
• 1 rulebook